Sciascia, a "civil" writer, and the mystery

Resumen

Sciascia was a reader of detective novels since his adolescence. Critical towards any aspects of entertainment of this gendre, he was an attentive connoisseur, disenchanted, sometimes polemical. Sciascia was interested in some great writers, among others Simenon, Dürrenmatt, Gadda. He has written essays and notes about several authors of mystery literature. These works are interesting o to understand and to explain the nature of his books and his choices as a writer. From Il Giorno della civetta [The day of the owl] (1961), to Una storia semplice [A simple story] (1989; the year of his death), Sciascia has utilized the detective story in different ways, also for critique or parody, to represent the mechanisms of the Mafia, the collusions between Mafia and power, the metamorphosis of the organized criminal activities, the involvement (in these activities) of powerful figures of the establishment. Sciascia has written narrative pages of high and relevant testimonial value, which reveal the ambiguity and the violences to justice, developed between rules and parody, truth and fiction, reality and imagination, always supported by a deep civil conscience, very far from any spirit of compromise.